What Was It For?

I agree with Matthew Yglesias:

"So this war . . . all the Israelis killed . . . the even greater number of Arabs killed . . . Israel achieved, what, exactly? Condoleezza Rice delayed the implementation of a cease-fire agreement for weeks in order to do . . . what? I feel like the many people who were so busy slamming skeptics of Israel's policy really have a duty to address this. What went wrong? Was this really such a hot policy in retrospect? Were all of us saying this was leading to pointless bloodshed and not much else really just driven by our deep-seated Jew-hating?"